How to Finish a Trimless Pocket Door

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Installing a pocket door — a sliding door that, when opened, is tucked away into a hidden nook inside the wall — is going to be a difficult task under any circumstance, requiring a lot of very precise lines and cuts. And to install a trimless pocket door is like taking the safety net from that project. To put it mildly, a trimless pocket door is a challenge, one that the skillful contractors at Refresh Home Improvements took on, with some help from Trim-Tex vinyl drywall corner bead during the finishing process.

“Anyone who’s ever attempted a trimless project knows that there is much less room for error every step of the way,” says RHI’s Dan Truer. “You quickly realize that casing isn’t merely decorative, it also serves as a buffer for any inadequacies in your installation. The biggest challenge in going trimless is that you no longer have that leeway. Your framing has to be level and true, and your drywall margins need to be super tight.”

The Trimless Pocket Door Process

For this project, after installing a reliable KN Crowder pocket door assembly, Dan, Steve and Mike Truer from RHI began the finishing phase with a gorgeous application of our F Reveal Bead (which they painted a sleek, dark gray) along the bottom of the drywall surface to the floor. That F Bead creates a stylish, modern look, almost as though the drywall is suspended in midair an inch above the floor. Plus, the PVC material of the bead means the foot of your wall is more water-resistant than wooden or MDF baseboards.

How to Finish a Trimless Pocket Door
How to Finish a Trimless Pocket Door

The Toronto contractors made that choice of product for two clever reasons: (1) the movement of that door opening and closing so many times over the years is going to cause a lot of stress and impact on the assembly, which would easily cause a metal corner bead to crack or dent — the rigid vinyl of our L Bead will not — and (2), after the whole assembly is mudded, sanded and painted, that L Bead is going to give you a clean, trimless finish that doesn’t even appear to have a corner bead in it in the first place. It’s going to look like the sliding door somehow grew naturally out of that wall!

The Results

“Trim-Tex products helped us solve two problems at once,” said Dan. “The pocket door hardware we selected was designed to be integrated into a standard 2”x4” wall. As you can imagine, that left us with very little space to drywall and corner bead both sides of the door opening. Fortunately, because Trim-Tex is made of a durable vinyl, it gave us the rigidity we needed without having to add drywall to the back side. Also, because the L Bead comes in an oversized 1 ¼” option, we were able to ‘cap’ the edge of the opening at the exact depth we needed. In the end, we got a super clean, durable edge profile with less work — AND it will last longer!”

How to Finish a Trimless Pocket Door - finished - sinks


As you can see from the above video, Refresh Home Improvements walked away triumphant with this trimless pocket door project. And we couldn’t be more pleased to see our products playing a small role to help them do their best work. Going trimless may be more of a high-wire act than the more traditional approach, but the results speak for themselves — their pocket door installation looks fresh and sophisticated, all while not calling too much attention to itself.

If you’re looking for more tips like this, be sure to check out how RHI finished around a window using Tear Away Bead here. And to learn more about RHI and what they're doing around the Toronto area, check out their website!

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